232 pp. - b/w and colour ill. - softbound - printed 2017
Italian and English text

Francesco Taxis (Cornello dei Tasso 1459 - Brussels 1517) is considered the ancestor of the family that, between the end of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth century started and organized the Post of the Hapsburgs, creating fast and stable connections with the main European towns, activity for which the credit of founding modern Post of Europe is accorded to the Tasso family.

The text, proposed also in English version, is based upon the figure of the ancestor and examines the documents on which Tasso's fortune is built: after the initial reference to the origins of the family from Cornello and the hint to the first postal tasks in Venice and by the papal court, lingers on the start of Tasso's Post in Tyrol, describing the receipts for some payments received by Francesco and by his relatives for postal activities.

The book describes then the beginning of Post in the Flanders, studying the content of the patent letters by Philip the Handsome and Charles I of Spain who bestowed to Francesco Tasso the role of chief and master of the Imperial Post.

The work is closed by a hint to the diffusion of Post in the main European towns after Francesco's death, occurred in 1517, and to the role of his nephews who took his inheritance on to expand it up to transform it into an international enterprise destined to last for centuries.